Yes, we often are confused by eliminating what D. Elton Trueblood called "the holy conjunction"..."and"...thus we eliminate paradox from our feeble attempts at understanding.
I believe Trueblood was talking about the balance between service to both God
and man, evangelism
and social action, heart
and mind. Not God's sovereignty
and man's responsibility. But Charles H. Spurgeon's sermon #207 certainly make that point.
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0207.htm
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, August 1, 1858, by the
REV. C. H. Spurgeon
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens
If any man be saved, he is saved by Divine grace, and by Divine grace alone; and the reason of his salvation is not to be found in him, but in God. We are not saved as the result of anything that we do or that we will; but we will and do as the result of God's good pleasure, and the work of his grace in our hearts. No sinner can prevent God; that is, he cannot go before him, cannot anticipate him; God is always first in the matter of salvation. He is before our convictions, before our desires, before our fears, before our hopes. All that is good or ever will be good in us, is preceded by the grace of God, and is the effect of a Divine cause within.
The system of truth is not one straight line, but two. No man will ever get a right view of the gospel until he knows how to look at the two lines at once. I am taught in one book to believe that what I sow I shall reap: I am taught in another place, that "it is not of him that willeth nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." I see in one place, God presiding over all in providence; and yet I see, and I cannot help seeing, that man acts as he pleases, and that God has left his actions to his own will, in a great measure. Now, if I were to declare that man was so free to act, that there was no presidence of God over his actions, I should be driven very near to Atheism; and if, on the other hand, I declare that God so overrules all things, as that man is not free enough to be responsible, I am driven at once into Antinomianism or fatalism. That God predestines, and that man is responsible, are two things that few can see. They are believed to be inconsistent and contradictory; but they are not. It is just the fault of our weak judgment. Two truths cannot be contradictory to each other. If, then, I find taught in one place that everything is fore-ordained, that is true; and if I find in another place that man is responsible for all his actions, that is true; and it is my folly that leads me to imagine that two truths can ever contradict each other. These two truths, I do not believe, can ever be welded into one upon any human anvil, but one they shall be in eternity: they are two lines that are so nearly parallel, that the mind that shall pursue them farthest, will never discover that they converge; but they do converge, and they will meet somewhere in eternity, close to the throne of God, whence all truth doth spring.
In the first five minutes of his sermon that day, I'm sure Spurgeon spoke to a dead-silent hall. Parties of both persuasions had to be enthralled that Spurgeon, the great pastor, theologian, author and orator, was condemning
both their understandings, telling them
both that they incessantly and stubbornly looked at only one side of a single coin. The sermon is masterful, and should silence the debate forever.
But of course, it didn't, it won't, and the dumb arguments will continue.
:godisgood:
... but sometimes His followers are as dense as hedge posts.
